VOYAGER Ø
A Few Squares from
A KNIGHT'S TOUR
The 18th Century mathematician Leonhard Euler made a square where each
horizontal or vertical row totals 260, stopping halfway on each gives 130.
Even more intriguing is that a chess knight, starting its L-shaped moves from
box 1, can hit all 64 boxes in numerical order.
–DAVID BERGAMINI
Mathematics (1980)
Closets, attics, and basements are our time capsules.
In my final days, I have been excavating mine
while reflecting upon a lifetime of accumulations from Target, Wally-World, and Beyond.
Among the rubble, I have discovered eighteen boxes, each approximately 8 x 8 x 4 inches, constructed of plexiglass.
Contained within each box are objects somehow related to NASA's Voyager II mission to explore the planets.
Each box contains a chess knight unique in material and design, some polyhedral dice, and various trinkets common to the debris dispersed randomly throughout a typical thrift shop.
Each is backed by an acrylic painting depicting a planetary surface based on a Voyager II photo.
A large scrapbook of related notes and clippings labeled PLANETARIUM was discovered in a hallway closet.
These notes indicate that I constructed the first voyager square during the winter solstice of 1985 as Voyager II approached its Uranian flyby.
Included in the scrapbook are quotes and references for a proposed master's thesis in metamathematics.
However, no copy of any completed thesis has as yet been located.
Selected notes from this scrapbook are collected on the following pages.
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